Hopeful Thinking

We have a natural vetting process among our human community. One which no politician can curtail, nor parent activist dislodge.  Before I go further, I have a few questions. How effective is it to ban a book? Does it work? Does the book fall out of circulation thereafter? Do people immediately discontinue reading it? Or does it take on a life of its own bolstered by the controversy? And when we blacklist someone from polite society for unloving statements or hostile actions, what happens to them? These are examples along the spectrum of what we now refer to as “cancel culture.” To be considered here is the metric by which someone or something is genuinely canceled versus being launched into greater public awareness.  Once something or someone is offered up by society for cancellation for an offense, either real or imagined, that cancellation is either enforced or nullified by society. We are the true jury. The formula by which that decision is collectively made is often based ...

Is organized religion meant to be a permanent part of our human culture? If so, in what form? Because the decline in participation in religion, not only in our country but throughout the world, shows no sign of abating. Why might that be?  Statistics actually do tell us why that might be. A common factor among those who report upon why they’ve left their faith is that religion has failed us. They state that it has failed to live up to the very standards it claims to promote with regard to loving our neighbor as ourselves.  Of course, not all religious believers are examples of this failure. There are many devout and truly loving practitioners of religious faith. But they are not the loudest ones in the room. And those who wield scripture like a weapon are taking up nearly all the oxygen. They are turning away people in droves. At a minimum, this leaves a bad taste in the mouths of the honestly faithful. At worst, it compels them to turn from their faith entirely. For those who...

Our culture has a huge issue with boredom and laziness. Of course, there are good reasons for that, some of which, however, no longer apply to modern culture. In the past, idleness could be dangerous. It could mean starvation in the winter, for example, if not enough food was properly grown, harvested, stored, and prepared. It could mean that repairs go unmade, clothes unsewn, shelters unbuilt. There was no time to sit around contemplating one’s navel. Many have heard of the “seven deadly sins.” Sloth, a.k.a. laziness, is one among them. In Christianity, though, cloistered monks and nuns were historically advised of an eighth deadly sin as well. That known as acedia. Acedia comes from a Greek word that means “a lack of care.” It wasn’t so much a sin as a warning, however. Because the word was used to describe the types of despondency and dejection which are the hallmarks of despair. Something to which those who have shut themselves away from society in favor of a life of contemplation ...

I have always maintained a philosophy that it’s better to trust people and risk betrayal, than it is to assume betrayal and risk trust.  In the course of my life, my adventurous sensibility, now somewhat dampened as I’ve gotten older, has lead me into many, many situations that would typically be deemed dangerous. Yet I invariably felt safe. I have definitely hobnobbed with criminals, taken risks with people who might not necessarily have had my best interests in mind, taken candy from strangers, and let people suffering from addiction sleep in my home.  It’s true there have been two or three occasions over the years where my trust was misplaced. I once had to replace an apartment full of electronics, and another houseguest once required an unceremonious dumping in the driveway for stealing. There may have been one or two others I’m not remembering. Because I don’t really dwell on them. What I tend to dwell on, is the fact that on so many occasions, people who were decidedly u...

One of my favorite lessons in acting school was about the benefit of taking risks. Those risks were specifically about the skill of acting and expressing the truth of a character, but all actor training focuses entirely around emulating the inner workings of human feelings and behavior. So it becomes quite a good test kitchen for understanding it.  Which also means facing the very human anxiety of taking those risks. Describing it as a fear of failure is somewhat oversimplified. Because often we are just as equally afraid of success and the implications of succeeding. Ironic, isn’t it? We most comfortably prefer something called homeostasis, meaning something which remains in a constant state, unchanging. It feels safe and familiar. But it is also stagnant. And we are not built for stagnancy. Life is much like a successful gene pool. It requires diversity of experience. Curveballs. Adversity. And especially failure. It requires a steady stream of new input to engage with. Thinking ...

What does it mean to celebrate? The origins of the word celebrate are actually unknown; something I’ve rarely encountered in my fascination with word history. It suggests that, rather than being assembled from existing word forms with known meanings, the term arose into existence as part of our origin languages in times before history.  All of its oldest known appearances make note that it is universally used to describe a large group of people assembling for the purpose of honor and joy.  To me, this is an indication of our inherent communal nature as human beings. To celebrate an event, an accomplishment, or a milestone together as a group is a tradition of our species. But why? What does it do for us? Science shows that celebrations are particularly important for our emotional and societal health. They make us feel less alone. They remind us that while we are each individuals, we are at one with something magnificently larger than ourselves. This awareness is something we d...

After yet another mass shooting, I continue to wonder about the solution. I believe there must be one. Some societal equation we have yet to decipher. Some question we’ve forgotten to ask. It is my spirituality toward which I turn when asking such vastly existential questions as this. That’s why it’s so often the advice to throw love at a situation we don’t understand or haven’t yet solved in order to decide how to best handle it. This means the spiritual answer to the gun problem must be love. But guns are such a loaded topic, so full of grief and misery and loss. Politically volatile, goading us towards combustion, it’s hard to even have a reasonable conversation about it, much less throw love at it. Yet, as far as the application of spiritual principles go, we must remember that guns are no different than any enemy. They are something that must be loved in order to be transformed. How does one love a gun when they are perceived to be the enemy? Psychologically, forgiveness of the gu...